Buildings that melt
An ice hotel is the only kind of hotel with a demolition date built into its opening. The material is cut from a river or packed from snow, carved into rooms, used for a season, and then allowed to go back where it came from — which means the floorplan, the carvings and often the whole architectural idea change from one year to the next.
Warmth is handled by equipment rather than by heating: thermal sleeping bags, hides, and a warm building nearby for washing and for the parts of the night that do not go to plan. All four properties below run a warm operation alongside the cold one.
Ice
Icehotel
Jukkasjärvi, Lapland, Sweden
The original, and still the reference point: since the late nineteen-eighties a hotel has been built each winter from ice taken out of the Torne river, then allowed to return to it in spring. Invited artists carve individual suites, so the building is different every year in a way no conventional hotel ever is.
A permanent, refrigerated section now operates through the summer as well, which means the ice rooms are no longer strictly seasonal. Warm accommodation sits beside the cold rooms, and most guests use both across a stay.
- Rebuilt each winter
- Art suites carved by invited artists
- A year-round section alongside
Ice
Hôtel de Glace
Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier, Québec, Canada
Just outside Québec City, the Hôtel de Glace is built from snow and ice every winter and taken down when the season ends, making it the only structure of its kind in North America. The plan changes from year to year around a chosen theme, and the carved suites are the part most visitors photograph.
It functions as a day attraction as much as a hotel; a large share of people who walk through the vaulted corridors never sleep there. Those who do are briefed carefully beforehand, because sleeping at a few degrees above freezing is a skill as much as an experience.
- North America's ice hotel
- Rebuilt annually
- Themed carved suites
Ice
Kirkenes Snowhotel
Kirkenes, Finnmark, Norway
Kirkenes sits close to Norway's border with Russia, further east than most of Finland, and the Snowhotel there makes the most of that extreme position. Rooms are carved and decorated in ice, with reindeer hides and expedition-grade sleeping bags doing the actual work of keeping guests warm.
The site is more than the ice building alone: timber cabins on the fjord shore, a kennel of working huskies, and a reindeer enclosure all form part of the operation, and the hotel is open through the dark months when the sun does not rise.
- Far above the Arctic Circle
- Ice-carved rooms plus cabins
- Working husky kennels
Ice
SnowHotel Kemi
Kemi, Lapland, Finland
Kemi's SnowHotel forms one wing of a larger annual snow construction on the Gulf of Bothnia, a complex that also takes in a snow restaurant and a chapel. The snow is packed rather than cut in blocks, giving the corridors a softer, more sculpted edge than a pure ice building.
Because it stands on the coast rather than inland, the surrounding landscape is sea ice — flat, pale and enormous — and excursions out onto it are a standard part of a stay.
- Part of the SnowCastle complex
- Baltic coast location
- Seasonal winter opening